Darkest Hour's Director, Joe Wright Breaks Down A Scene with Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill

Hello, I'm Joe Wright,

and this is Notes on a Scene for Darkest Hour.

(melancholic music)

(door bangs)

(disperse traffic turmoil)

So here's Winston Churchill driving in the back of his car.

He's lost his matches.

And we'll see where the matches end up in a moment.

That out there is a blue screen,

and the background was added later.

The whole lighting aesthetic of the film is kind of noirish.

You just had a very soft light coming through the window.

And that was about it.

I don't think there was much further.

I think there was probably something

coming through the back window, as well,

to create that kind of slight

little bit of back three quarter light right there.

Gary's quite a skinny guy,

and he certainly doesn't have jowls like that,

so the makeup in this scene...

The prosthetics goes like there,

like there,

like there,

and then there's a nose piece there.

And this is obviously a wig.

He'd spend four hours at makeup every morning,

and then an hour getting out of makeup in the evening.

So, I literally didn't see Gary

for the three months of the shoot.

A large narrative arc of the film is about

Winston's connection or disconnection with the populist.

I stretched time in the opening couple of shots

with the slow motion.

And then we do this very, very quick montage shots

kind of skipping through temporal reality, to create

the impression of his disappearing.

I think this was about 200 hundred extras on this day.

It's really about the blocking, and making sure

that the frame is constantly alive and interesting.

Here is the pressure of the war is mounting.

I wanted to get a sense of people running for shelter

while I poured the rain in.

(tense music)

(doors screeching)

Do you know how to use this thing?

Yes, sir.

How do I get to Westminster?

Westminster, uhm.

The District line, east, one stop.

District line, east, one stop.

Well, that doesn't sound so hard.

No, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

So I like this shot, the camera's moving,

the elevator does not move.

And as the camera was reaching it's top jib position,

all the extras were told to go like that,

to give a sense that the elevator

has just come to an abrupt stop.

That sort of thing tickles me.

I really like her face, as well.

That's kind of one of those moments when you arrive on set,

and you start kind of placing

all of the supporting actors, the extras,

and you find the right faces.

This guy had a good nose, so I specifically asked him

to stand in full ground profile, silhouetted.

And then we saw this girl's face,

and thought she had a rather lovely face,

and so asked her to look up into the light.

And so you kind of play with what's available on the day.

Camera's on this new piece of kit called a Stabileye,

which is basically a very small rig

that can move through very small spaces,

operated by the grip.

And it just reduces any camera shake,

and I think might well be taking over from the Steadicam.

Do you know how to use this thing?

Yes, sir.

I asked her who her favorite celebrity was and said,

Imagine, that you've just met them.

It's not really appropriate for her

to curtsy at that moment either,

it's like she does that out of nervousness.

The memorandum is titled Suggested Approaches to Italy,

and is as follows.

So again, the camera is on a Stabileye, mounted on a dolly,

so that it can get through this small gap in the table,

and finally we see where Winston's matches are.

So we start with a wide

and then slowly move in closer and closer

to reveal the match box

which we've seen his wife give him in a much earlier scene.

I love tableaux, I like the kind of figures in space

and I'm a fan of Renaissance painting,

where figures kind of take up a certain proportion

of the frame leaving the kind of top third

of frame free.

So this is the guy here who's gonna be reading the speech.

It's kind of the darkest hour for the British government.

They're discussing the possible treaty with Germany,

and so you're just trying to create

a sense of the despondency.

This guy here, Halifax played by Stephen Dillane is really

the architect of this peace deal.

So it's just kind of trying

to create quite a classical frame, really.

I guess I'm a bit of a classicist.

[Man] We understand that he desires a solution

of certain Mediterranean questions,

and if he would state in secrecy what these are.

France and Great Britain will at once

do their best to meet these wishes.

(train screeching)

Winston was often portrayed as being someone

who's kind of a slow and lugubrious.

And actually what we found

when we were looking at footage of Winston

was this kind of dynamic kinetic energy.

[Man] France and Great Britain will at once

do their best to meet these wishes.

The train is not there, the train is CGI.

I could only actually afford two, maybe three shots

with the train so I had to think about

how I could most economically show the idea of the train

coming into the station.

I couldn't actually put a camera on the platform

to see the front of the train

because we couldn't afford to build

digitally the front of the train.

So we came up with this solution.

So, this is the underground.

He's looking for his matches,

and the idea for that was a very late one,

and it only came to me during shooting

that he should be looking for his matches.

It's a kind of momentary coincidence,

if he hadn't lost his matches,

he might not have gotten out of the car,

if he hadn't gotten out of the car,

he wouldn't have gone into the underground.

So that was one scene from Darkest Hour.

I hope you enjoyed that, and thanks very much.